Margaret was reading a few pages of my diary to-night.
"Why," she said, "it's all about yourself!"
"Not all," I said hastily, "some of it is about you ... but I won't let
you read that part until you are my wife. If you knew the terrible
things I have written about you you would go off straightway and marry
Joe Smith."
"You think quite a lot of yourself," she said with a laugh.
"Everybody thinks a lot of himself, Margaret. If I died to-night you
would probably have forgotten the shape of my nose by the time you were
sixty, but you'll never forget that I told you your neck was the
loveliest neck in the county. My old grandmother used to tell me again
and again of the man who stopped her on the road when she was seven and
told her that her eyes were like blue stars. His name was Donald Gunn
... but she could never recollect the names of the girls she played
with.
"The people who don't think much of themselves are people who have no
personality to be proud of ... personally I haven't yet met any of the
brand. We all have something that we're conceited about, dear. You are
conceited about your eyes and your neck and your hair. Jean Hardie is
about the plainest girl in the village, but I could bet that she thinks
her hair the most glorious in the place ... and it is too.
"Very often we are conceited about the things that we can do worst. I
can draw pretty well, but I'm not conceited about it. I can't sing for
nuts ... and if anyone left the room when I was warbling I should hate
him to all eternity. I like a man to be an egotist ... if he has got an
ego of any value. Peter MacMannish is a type of egotist that should be
put into a lethal chamber. He has no ego to talk about, but he imagines
that his stomach is his ego, and he will talk to you for an hour about
the 'yirkin'' of the organ in question."
"What is an ego?" asked Margaret. "I never heard the word before."
"It is the Latin word for 'I,' and a person who uses the pronoun 'I'
very often is called an egotist. The other word egoist has a different
meaning; it means a person who thinks of himself all the time, a selfish
person. You can be an egotist without being an egoist, and vice versa.
Peter Mitchell never talks about himself; while you talk about yourself
he is thinking out a method of selling you something at double its
value.
"There are two kinds of egotist ... the man who talks about what he
does, and the man who talks about what he thinks. When I get letters
from my friends they are full of "I's." Dorothy Westbrook, a college
friend of mine, a medallist in half-a-dozen classes, fills eight pages
with small talk.... 'I went to see Tree in the Darling of the Gods last
night,' and so on. I generally skip the eight pages and look at the
post-script. May Baxter, another college friend, a girl who wouldn't
recognise a medal if you showed her one, writes ten pages, and she
usually commences with something like this:--'I was re-reading _The New
Machiavelli_ last night, and I think that I begin to despise Wells now.'
I read her letter a dozen times. When she does take a fancy for the
other kind of egotism she is delightful: she doesn't tell me what she
does; she tells me what she is.
"I have half a mind to leave you for a year, Margaret, just to give you
a chance of writing about yourself. I won't be able to write to you in
the same strain: I wrote myself out when I fell in love at twenty-two.
You can only be a good letter-writer once, and that is when you are
discovering yourself for the first time, and ramming it down on paper as
fast as you can. I used to write letters of twenty foolscap pages, but
now I never write a letter if I can help it. Life has lost most of its
glamour when you realise that you have discovered yourself. It's a sad
business discovering yourself, dear. You set out to persuade yourself
that you are a genius or a saint, and, after a long examination of
yourself you discover that you are a sorry creature. You set out with
Faith and Hope at your elbow, and at the end you find that they have
long since left you, but you find that Charity has taken their place.
Charity begins at home says the proverb, and I take this to mean that
Charity comes to you when you find yourself at home, when you discover
yourself. I used to be the most uncharitable of mortals, but now I
seldom judge a man or woman. Peter MacMannish gets drunk; I do not
condemn him, for I have looked on the wine when it was red. Mary
MacWinnie has had two illegitimate children; I am a theoretical Don
Juan. Shepherd, the rabbit-catcher, has an atrocious temper; I do not
judge him, because, although my own temper is pretty equable, I can
realise that the man can no more help his temper than I can the size of
my feet. Charity comes to you when you have discovered how weak you are,
and that's what kept me from being a good code teacher. I was such a
poor weak devil that I couldn't bring myself to make the boys salute me
or fear me."
"You say that, but you don't believe it."
"I believe it, Margaret. My whole theory of education is built on my
abject humility. My chief objection to Macdonald is that he ignores his
own weaknesses. He has never analysed himself to see what manner of man
he is. If he could look into his heart and discover all the little
meanesses and follies and hypocrisies he would not have the courage to
make a boy salute him; he would not have the impudence to strap a boy
for swearing. One of the worst things about Macdonald and a thousand
other dominies is that they have forgotten their childhood. A dominie
should never grow up. I would take away from all students their
text-books on School Management and Psychology, and put into their hands
Barrie's _Peter Pan_ and Stevenson's _A Child's Garden of Verses_.
"Margaret, why can't people see that the Macdonald system is all wrong?
What in all the world is the use of dominies and ministers and parents
posing before children? What is respect but a pose? What is Macdonald's
sternness but a pose? He is a kindly decent fellow outside his school.
The bairns meet with pose the first thing in the morning when they enter
the school. They stand up and repeat the Lord's Prayer monotonously, and
without the faintest realisation of what they are saying. The dominie
closes his eyes and clasps his hands in front of him, and I don't
believe there is a single dominie in Scotland who really prays each
morning. For that matter I don't believe that there are half-a-dozen
ministers who repeat the prayer on Sundays with any thought of its
meaning. The morning prayer is a gigantic sham. When I said to Macdonald
that I would have it abolished in schools he almost had a fit. The
bigger the sham is the louder is the screaming in its defence if you
attack it.
"Think of all the shams that parents practise. They pretend that babies
come in the doctor's pocket; they pretend that a lie is as much an
abomination to them as it is to the Lord; they imply by their actions
that they never stole apples in their lives; they hint that they don't
know what bad language means. They live a life that is one continuous
lie."
"I don't understand that," said Margaret with a puzzled look.
"A mother lies to her child when she tells it that it is wicked when it
makes a noise; a father lies to his son when he tells him that he will
come to a bad end if he smokes any more cigarettes. Worse than that they
lie by negation. The father changes his 'Hell!' into 'Hades!' when he
hits his thumb with a hammer; the mother says 'Tut Tut!' when she means
'Damnation!' Both go to church as an example to their offspring ... and
going to church is in most cases a lie. Nearly every father of a family
says grace before meat, and he generally delays the practice until his
first-born is old enough to take notice. Then there is the lie about
relationship. A child never discovers that its father has about as much
love for its mother's aunt as he has for the King of Siam.
"Convention is one huge lie, Margaret. You lift your hat when a coffin
goes by; you beg my pardon when I ask you to pass the marmalade; you
stand bare-headed when a band plays the National Anthem. It's all a lie,
dear, a pretty lie perhaps, but a lie all the same. But after all, the
manners business is a minor affair; you can't abolish it, and if you try
you will only make yourself ridiculous. But the other lies, the
hypocritical lies that are told to children ... these are dangerous. An
ardent republican will doff his hat when the band plays _God Save the
King_, and be none the worse; the unpleasantness that might follow his
keeping his hat on his head wouldn't be worth it. But if I pretend to a
child that I am above human frailty I am doing a hellish thing that may
have devilish consequences."
"Your language is awful!" cried Margaret in feigned protest.
"I was quoting _The Ancient Mariner_, dear; you read it at my evening
class, and you have evidently forgotten it. Since the beginning of
humanity children have been warped by the attitudinising of their
elders. A child is imitative always; he hasn't the power to think out
biggish things for himself. He is tremendously docile; he will believe
almost anything you tell him, and he will accept an older person's pose
without question. If one of the village boys were to see Macdonald
stotting home drunk he would be like the countryman who, when he saw a
giraffe for the first time, cried: 'Hell!... I don't believe it!' And
the sad thing is that they never are able to distinguish between pose
and truth. The villagers who used to tell my bairns that I was daft
don't realise what pose is; they have never found the right values. When
they criticise the minister or the dominie they invariably fasten on the
wrong things. They are beginning to criticise Macdonald because he
insists on a bairn's bringing a written excuse when he has been absent,
but they believe in all his poses--his love for respect, his authority,
his whackings, his hiding of his pipe when a child is near, his passion
for sex morality, his dignity, his ... his frayed frock coat that he
wears in school."
"The poor man's only wearing out his old Sunday coat!" protested
Margaret.
"I never thought of that, Margaret; I'll cut out the coat. But he
shouldn't have a frock coat anyway. When we get married I shall insist
on dressing in an old golfing jacket, flannel bags, and a soft collar.
The only danger is that men of my stamp are apt to make unconvention
conventional. It's a very difficult thing to keep from posing when you
are protesting against pose."
"Oh! I don't understand the half of what you say," said Margaret
wearily.
"That means that you think my lips might be better employed, you
schemer!" and I ... well, I don't think I need write everything down
after all.
* * *
"There was a venter locust at the schule the day," remarked Annie. I was
brushing my boots at the bothy door, and the girls sat on the step and
watched me.
"A what?" I asked.
"A venter locust. Ye paid a penny to get in, and Jim Jackson gaithered
the pennies in the mannie's hat and got in for nothing, for he didna
put his ain penny in."
"What sort of show was it, Annie?"
"He had a muckle doll wi' an awfu' ugly face, and he asked it
questions."
"Did it answer them?"
"Aye. It opened its great big mooth."
"There maybe was a gramaphone inside," suggested Gladys.
"Jim Jackson said that it was the mannie that was speakin' a' the time,"
said Janet.
"Jim Jackson was bletherin'," said Annie with scorn. "Aw watched 'im,
and his mooth never moved a' the time."
"Perhaps he was talking through his hat, Annie," I said.
"He wasna," she cried, "for his hat was on the Mester's desk fu' o'
pennies!"
"Well," I ventured, "the proverb says that money talks, you know."
"Weel," tittered Annie, "there wasna much money to talk, for the pennies
was nearly a' hapennies!"
"Aw dinna understand how that doll managed to speak," said Ellen, and I
proceeded to explain the mysteries of ventriloquism to them. Then I told
them my one ventriloquist yarn.
A broken-down ventriloquist stopped at a village inn one hot day, and
stared longingly through the bar door. He hadn't a cent in his pocket.
He sat down on the bench and gazed wearily at a stray mongrel dog that
had followed him for days. Suddenly inspiration came to him. He rose and
walked into the bar.
"A pint of beer, mister!" he cried, and pretended to fumble for his
money, when the landlord placed the tankard on the bar counter.
The dog looked up into his face.
"Here, mister," said the dog, "ain't I going to get one?"
The landlord started.
"That's a remarkable animal," he said with staring eyes.
"Pretty smart," said the ventriloquist indifferently.
"I'll--I'll buy that dog," said the landlord eagerly; "I'll give you
five pounds for him."
The ventriloquist considered for a while.
"All right," he said at length, "I hate to part with an old friend like
him, but I must live, and I have no money."
The landlord counted out the five sovereigns, and the ventriloquist
drank up his beer and made for the door.
"Better come round and take hold of the dog," he said, "or he'll follow
me."
The landlord lifted the bar-flap and took hold of the dog by the collar.
At the door the ventriloquist looked back. The dog gazed at him.
"You brute," it cried, "you've sold me for vulgar gold. I swear that
I'll never speak again."